


Present for a Moment

by RougueShadowWolf



Series: 15 Minutes [225]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent & Stiles Stilinski Are Siblings, Alpha Peter Hale, Brutal Murder Of A Child, Burns, Cheating, Child Stiles Stilinski, Crazy Kate Argent, Evil Kate Argent, Half-Siblings, Injured Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Mpreg, Past Chris Argent/Peter Hale, Post-Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Sheriff Stilinski is Not Stiles Stilinski's Parent, The Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Twin Stiles Stilinski, Warning: Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 01:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RougueShadowWolf/pseuds/RougueShadowWolf
Summary: A night of passion, a mistake, between past friends and lovers, had resulted in two lives being created. Twin-boys birthed and loved by one father, while the other did his best to pretend that he’d never fathered Christina, the child brutally murdered by Kate Argent, and Theron who survived the fire but was left marked by the flames she’d lit.





	Present for a Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Into the darkness we go. Stay brave, stay calm, and follow me to face the fiends of old. 
> 
> This round of 15Minutes happened in the early days of August, but due I forgot to post them because well, shit happens when you haven’t been sleeping and are still taking your allergy meds that have been messing with your brain for months. Anyways, so here we are now, because ItAlmostWorked! noticed my mistake. 
> 
> To everyone familiar with this series, please make your merry way down to A SLIGHT CHANGE while I give a gentle introduction to these fresh-faced and innocent souls who have stumbled into this realm. 
> 
> Now, my dearest innocent ones, I welcome you to my madness. The stories you find here are all written as small payments to a group of my most wicked friends, and each of them hands me a roadmap to the story the want, and the catch with this series is the limited time I’m provided with; each story is written in 15-miserable-minutes, hence the name of the series, and due to the time I have been gifted the story you are about to read is hastily written. The time-limit and my own failures at storytelling will doom this fic to be less than glorious, and it will also be ripe with bad grammar and typos are aplenty, and so if these sort of issues will drive you mad then I ask you to leave now before you find yourself in dangerous waters. However, if you are already mad and able to handle poor writing and a story born out of panic, then please, if you wish, follow me down to A SLIGHT CHANGE for there is still something I feel a need to share with you. 
> 
> A SLIGHT CHANGE has come to play this time around, and this change is a theme which is for this fic Twins, but worry not ReadingIsLikeWellDry still has the power to wish for things such as Stiles having a twin, and for mpreg (which if it isn’t your thing leave now and be at peace) with Peter and Chris as his biological parents but Chris chose Victoria and Allison over his twins. Now Stiles lost his twin brother in the fire that burned and broke Stiles own body, and while Peter was in a coma it was Derek and Laura who took care of him.

`Can you liv with it? ´ Peter suddenly asks him, guns are drawn and they are at a deadly standstill, and Chris knows Peter has to know how this night is going to end. There's no way in hell Chris can allow him to walk away like he will have to do with Peter's nephew, there's too much blood and even innocent blood on Peter's hands. 

`Can you liv with it? ´ the alpha repeats his question, voice trembling a little with a ray of emotions that Chris can’t get a handle on, and Chris nearly pulls the trigger as he watches Peter’s claws sink a little bit deeper into the throat of Kate who seemed perfectly aware how close to death she was tonight, her eyes dart frantically between Chris and her niece.

Chris could see the fear in Kate’s eyes, could see the wordless plea for her big brother to come to her rescue again, he could see it all as clearly as he could see how broken and damage Peter had become.

Swallowing the uneasy lump in his throat, Chris counters Peter’s question with one of his own, `Can I liv with what, Peter? ´

Dread floods his insides as he watches Peter’s grip on Kate tighten, and even at a distance Chris can hear how much Kate begins to struggle to breathe. There’s a flash of anger in Peter’s eyes before they bleed crimson, and Chris finger almost, almost, puts the last hint of pressure on the trigger that would put an end to Peter Hale.

`Can you go on living, with Kate around, knowing now what she did? ´ there’s a degree of despair in Peter’s voice then that strikes Chris to the core.

Peter is tormented by grief and the despair that came with it, and there was nothing in the world that could mend him, this was all painfully clear. 

`I told her, Christopher, I told her. ´ Peter continues, a whisper of something broken and desperate in his voice.

Chris can hear Allison move closer to him, but he doesn't take his eyes off of the werewolf he had a history with that his daughter should not learn about tonight, or ever. 

`Told her what? Told her what, Peter? ´ Chris still asks while watching as Derek moves about the shadows, blue-eyes that Peter had taken full-blame of back in the day when he still possessed a hint of heart. It's clear to Chris that the younger Hale was looking for a safe moment to strike his uncle down and bring this bloodied madness to an end. 

`About our sons! ´ Peter yells at him, and now it’s Chris’ turn to find it hard to breathe, and he hears the way Allison goes absolutely still at his side. The mood shifts around them, and Chris knows secrets long kept were about to be revealed, but before he can beg Peter to hold his tongue or to put a bullet between the eyes of the man who had always been a temptation Chris failed to fight. 

`I told her about them, about out boys,´ Peter almost cries then, and he is the true image of a desperate man who wore his pain and grief on his sleeve, `about how they were _yours_, how they were Argent’s and how they were human. I begged her to take them, to let them liv. They were just babies, just little boys and so I fucking begged her, I fucking begged her, Christopher! I was on my fucking knees, begging her to take the boys, leave them at a hospital our outside the house if she wouldn't take them to you. I FUCKING BEGGED! ´

Chris glances over at Kate, desperate to see some sign that what Peter was saying wasn’t true, or that she at least felt some genuine remorse for what she may have had done. However, what Chris sees, be it but for a brief moment, is that bone chilling smile of delighting in others misery that he’d soon so often on Kate’s face that he could never trust her around his daughter. Seeing that smile, that smile that had their own mother say more than once that Kate had a wicked heart, the sight of that smile has his blood running cold.

`But she wouldn’t believe me that they were human, she called me a liar. And then she – then she, ´ and here Peter closes his eyes, clearly struggling with the memory of that night, a desperate whine escaping him as he struggles to handle a memory from almost six years ago. When Peter finally looks back to where Chris was still standing, pointing a gun at Peter’s head, there’s this terrible haunted look in Peter’s eyes that Chris would never forget for as long as he lived.

`She – she was holding him, she was holding little Christian in her arms - one minute she stood there holding him, ´ and Chris knows just by the sickening look on Peter’s face that whatever the werewolf is about to tell him is bad. He can barely hear Kate barking orders at him, telling him not to listen to Peter, to just shoot him dead, but Chris feels a strange need to know what happened to his twin boys.

He deserves to know what happened to the two little boys, even if he’d chosen his wife and daughter over them, he deserves the punishment of knowing what happened because he wasn’t there to protect them.

`The next thing she had him by his chubby little ankles, and she was laughing while he was crying, and then she – then she just swung him…´

`Shoot him. Shoot him, Chris. ´ there was blood now trickling down one side of Kate’s throat as Peter dug his claws deeper and deeper.

`He cried out in fear that one split of a second before - before the wall… and then, and then…Oh God, the sound. ´ Peter’s voice breaks into a sob as he repeats the last two words he’s spoken, `The sound. The sound. ´ 

There's a gasp, a horrified one that leaves his daughter, one that would soon be followed by another.

Chris feels sick, and he knows, just by Peter’s voice and that flicker of a smile he’d seen in Kate’s eyes, he just knows that Peter wasn’t lying to him. When the howl-like scream erupts from Peter, Chris sees a twitch of a smile on Kate’s face, and even Allison seems to notice it by the horrified gasp he hears her make from his side, and it’s that smile and the cruel glint of delight in Kate’s eyes that causes Chris to pull the trigger.

He hears his daughter scream in shock, in horror really when the deed is done and Peter’s hold of Kate is released. Chris expects to feel something as he watches Kate fall to the ground dead, but he feels nothing for her while feeling far too much for Peter and the children he’d lost.

When Peter had told him a few months after their one night of reckless passion, Chris hadn’t believed him, called him a liar and a whole lot of other things, but Chris had agreed to see him only to see for himself that Peter wasn’t pregnant; Peter of course proved him wrong, his stomach had been round with life, stretchmarks already present when Peter had softly told him they were having twin-boys.

Chris had chosen Victoria and Allison over Peter and the twins. He’d believed that the boys wouldn’t suffer much without him, since they would have Peter and the rest of the Hale’s, and so Chris walked away from Peter, who informed him almost a month after the birth of their boys that they’d been born and that they’ve been born human.

`I’m sorry. ´ Chris recalls saying then, not an apology for leaving Peter or abandoning him with twins, but rather for the two children being born human and Peter had simply laughed sadly before ending the phone call without another word.

When Chris heard about the Hale fire, about Peter only just surviving it. He’d spent days reading every little thing about the fire, about the Hale’s who had survived it until the media just moved on from the Hale fire.

Chris had even gone to visit Peter, not that Peter knew that since he was unconscious and looked nothing like the man Chris remembered. He’d made an attempt to visit the six-month old victim of the fire that had survived, but who like Peter had been left in a terrible shape, but just one glance at the tiny boy had him running to the nearest toilet.

Standing there looking at Kate’s lifeless body while Allison was screaming at him, things that he couldn’t really comprehend at that moment, Chris finds himself wondering when the boy died, while hoping the boy hadn’t been made to suffer too long.

The sound of twigs breaking snaps him out of his thoughts, and has Peter up on his feet in a heartbeat, drying his tears and straightening his clothes just as Chris sees a child wearing what appeared to be wearing a pair of batman PJ’s and a bright-red hoodie, but it’s not so much the outfit the boy is wearing that causes Chris to stop breathing, and neither is the fact that a little kid is walking around the forest at night wearing no shoes or a proper jacket, no, it’s the rippled patches of healed skin that he sees stretch from the right-side of the kids neck and climbing all the way up to a disformed ear. There are a couple of fingers missing on the tiny hand.

`Stiles? ´ Derek says in disbelief which draws the attention of the now still child away from Kate’s lifeless body, and the little boy cries out for Derek before hurrying towards him, and Derek starts to run towards the little boy too but before Derek or the boy Stiles reach each other, Peter has snatched the boy up and into his arms, growling at Derek as he makes a move to get closer.

Peter holds the boy with a degree of gentleness one wouldn’t think possible while it was combined with a level of possessiveness.

`Peter. ´Derek starts, voice revealing just how unease he was about Peter holding the boy that seemed to try and twist himself free from Peter’s hold, which only made Peter press the boy closer to him, and the boy goes completely still when Peter kisses the unmarred skin a patch of unmarred skin near the boys cheek. Everything about the child scream fear to Chris, and Derek seems anything but comfortable with Peter holding the boy with dirty and soaking wet socks.

`No. ´ Peter breathes out, pressing the boy closer to him, hard enough to cause the child to whimper in clear discomfort, but Peter doesn’t seem to realize what the sound means and so just holds the boy tighter, and grows in Derek direction, `No, no one, no one is taking him away from me now. ´ there’s something dangerous, something forceful about the way Peter goes on to say, `Never again. Never again. ´

`Peter, please, ´ Derek pleads with his uncle, and Chris doesn’t think he’s ever seen Derek Hale look so desperate and afraid as he sees him now.

`No. No. You’re not taking him from me, Derek. He’s mine. ´ Peter barks furiously at Derek, shushing the boy when he starts to cry for Derek.

`Shh, Christian. Daddy’s got you. ´ Peter says so softly, that for a moment Chris is almost fooled to think he’s not a crazed alpha, but then he sees the claws and the glowing eyes as Peter watches them.

`Peter, ´ Derek calls out to his uncle desperately, `Peter, that’s not Christian, that’s Theron, Peter. ´

`I’m Stiles. ´ the boy protests, which seems to only make the concerns Derek has for the safety of the child that much greater.

`Theron? ´ Peter breathes out, before turning his head and breathing in the scent of the boy, humming softly the name Theron a few more times.

`No. Stiles. My name is Stiles. ´ the child insists, now really putting pushing against Peter’s hold, which only causes Peter to press the boys face against his neck and hold it there, which seems to only further upset the boy. No matter how desperately Peter hushed the child, and cradled the back of his head, the child grew more and more upset in his hold.

Derek glances over at Chris, and all he sees is fear and worry in Derek’s eyes, it’s clear the nephew doesn’t trust his uncle and with good reason if you asked Chris. Peter hadn’t shown much restrain for the past few days, he’d bit not just one teenager but two, and left a trail of blood and death that spoke not of a sane-werewolf but that of a feral one.

`Peter, please, you’re scarring him. ´ Derek pleaded, moving slowly towards his uncle who continued to create a distance between him as well as Chris, and the betas Peter had created one night. It was clear to everyone that now they were all seen as a form of a threat to Peter, and that made the alpha that much more dangerous.

`Derek. ´ the child whimpers, reaching out with one arm towards the one who had looked after him for years, a child Derek had done his best to keep Chris and everyone else as far away from him as possible, but it seemed Peter had got to the boy long before Kate had been killed.

`No. No, little Theron. ´ Peter hushes the frightened boy, placing a seemingly soft kiss upon the boy who continued to try and escape his clawed hold, `I told you, my precious little boy, that I would never let you go again. Daddy will keep you forever and ever, ´ and her Peter snarled in the direction of Derek, `and no one will take you from daddy ever again. ´ and then with one murderous glare in Chris’ direction that sent a shock of fear through his body, Peter growled, `No one, no one will take you from me, Theron. No one. ´

`No one is going to take him from you, Peter. ´ Derek says then, but it’s clear even to Chris that Derek had no plans of leaving his frightened cousin with Peter, and Chris knows immediately that this will not sit well with his uncle.

`You’re _not_ taking him! ´ Peter roared loud enough to cause everyone to flinch, and the two young betas cowering immediately. The wrathful roar is enough to cause the fire-marked child to go absolutely still in Peter’s arms, the child is however anything but relaxed in Peter’s arms, and soon Chris can hear the loud and rapid breaths that were shallow in nature come from the son Chris hadn’t done a thing to help even after the fire that left the boy parentless and without the company of his twin.

`He’s my son. My son. ´ Peter continues, eyes bloody-red and the bones of his face beginning to shift beneath his blood-stained face.

Kate’s blood, Chris’ brain supplies unhelpfully when Peter turns briefly his bloodstained face in his direction, a loud and threatening snarl escaping him which serve to distress the boy further.

Chris begins to search for an opening, for some way to safely take Peter down before the alpha did something that Peter might regret, the sight of Peter’s claws so close to the throat of the small child that seemed to grow more and more distressed by the minute.

`I know, Peter. I know. No one is denying that. ´ again Derek does his best to appear none-threatening, while also keeping Peter’s focus on him.

`You know nothing! ´ Peter barked furiously, teeth sharp and dangerous now, `_You know nothing_. ´

` It was my body that carried him, ´ Peter continues, his voice loud and unforgiving as he speaks, and Chris can see the way his claws begin to dig into the boy as Peter’s control begins to slip, ` It was I who suffered and gave him life. He is mine! ´

When Stiles whimpers, in pain instead of fear, Chris sees Derek take more than one step-back from his uncle, raising his hands so Peter could see them clearly.

`Please, Peter, ´ Derek begs, genuinely begs, ` I know you don’t mean to do it, but – but you’re hurting him. ´

`I WOULD NEVER HURT HIM! ´ Peter roars like a beast straight out of hell, `He is my son. I’ve loved him, loved him long before he was born, long before he was placed in my arms! ´

Somehow the child in Peter’s arms, the one Peter called Theron but who preferred to be called Stiles, turned his head just enough to look in Chris’ direction, allowing Chris to see clearly the fear in the young eyes of a boy that Chris had rejected.

_God, maybe if I hadn’t abandoned them_, Chris thinks briefly when he sees that the child doesn’t that Chris would do anything to help him, perhaps, if Chris had accepted responsibility for the twins things might’ve turned out differently; perhaps, Kate would’ve grown closer enough to the twins not to feel able to harm them, but even as he thinks this a voice in the back of his head laughs viciously and calls him a fool.

`I did everything, everything in my power, to keep Theron alive after losing Christian, ´ Peter yells, his desperation and pain showing, `I did everything I could to try and keep him from hearing the screams and cries around him, I covered his body as best I could while the flames burned the flesh off of my body. ´

`I know, ´ Derek cries, eyes wide and tearful as Peter’s claws finally breaks the pale skin of the boy who starts to struggle once more against Peter’s hold, trying to turn his head towards Derek while calling out to him in a desperate plea for Derek to come and help him.

`You did good, Peter. ´ Chris finds himself saying, drawing Peter’s attention and as soon as those bright-glowing-red eyes are on him, Derek starts to slowly move towards Peter once more.

`You did so good, Peter. ´ Chris says while lowering his gun, and Chris is telling the truth. Chris had learned how Peter had been found curled-up in one of the corners of the basement, his body stuck in that small corner and it wasn’t until the firefighters moved him that they realized he’d been shielding a small child.

`You did great, Peter. ´ Chris tells Peter who Chris had only later learned had risked his own life, as well as the spark of his wolf by not aborting the twins. 

`You kept him safe, Peter. You shielded him from the flames. You’re a hero, Peter. ´ Chris goes on to say, never taking his eyes off of Peter but still sensing that Derek was getting closer to his uncle, `you’re a hero, and he’s alive because of you. ´

`I had no choice! ´ Peter yells at him then, his despair in the forefront now, and all Chris could see now was a father who’d been made to watch one of his children be murdered without being able to stop it, a man who had to have known as he shielded his still living son that the chance of said child surviving the fire was slim to none.

`I lost Christian, I lost him. I failed him. ´ Peter cries then, the memory of the loss of one child causing him to cry in earnest as he continues tearfully, ` I – I couldn’t – I couldn’t fail, Theron. ´

`And you didn’t fail him, Peter. ´ Chris tells Peter softly, wishing he could put Kate down once more as he looks Peter in the now human eyes, `You made it possible for Theron to survive. You made it possible for him to be here today, he’s here and alive because of you. ´

Chris words appear to hold just enough power to cause Peter’s claws to withdraw, and instead of Peter pressing the head of the child against his shoulder, Peter pets the beanie covered head.

`I – I protected him. I protected him. I did. ´

`You did, Peter. You did. ´ Chris breathes out shakily, watching as the less than human features start to be replaced by the far more handsome human ones, `you did good, Peter. ´

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, the reason Peter named his son Christian instead of Christopher was because he felt hurt and angry over Chris’ rejection, and it was the closest to Chris’ name, while also picking the name of the first Hale that settled in Beacon Hills. Now why he’d named Stiles Theron is because it (I think, might be wrong) to hunt or hunter or huntsman, whatever it is, the connection to Chris is there once more in some shape at least. So, yeah, Peter really hadn’t gotten over Chris before the birth of their sons, or even after. 
> 
> Stiles however chose his own name a few years back, just because he’d liked it and that was that. 
> 
> It was Laura’s decision to tell Stiles that his parents are both dead, that they died in the fire, since she believed Peter would never be part of his life and didn’t want her cousin to grow-up knowing the shame of having parents like Peter (who got pregnant like some freak) and Chris (who cheated on his wife), she thought in a twisted way she was protecting Stiles, and pretty much forced her decision on Derek who might not have agreed with it; and Stiles accepted this as truth because, well, everyone else died in the fire and he there was so much else he had to deal with; like dealing with his burned body, and trying to liv as normal as possible. 
> 
> Of course, now Laura’s decision has come to bite them all in the bum. 
> 
> Anyways, it takes Peter a moment to recognize the scent that had caught on Derek, but once he does it revs-up the madness inside his head, and it’s a form of torture having to wait for the perfect moment to get his son which he gets when Kate has captured Derek and left Stiles in the hands of a friend from Derek’s high school years. 
> 
> Got to move on, but yeah, that’s the background of this story, sort of. 
> 
> Now I'm not sure anyone will like the rest of this story, since in my head Peter does get killed that night since everyone, even Chris, can't trust him not to do something unfortunate, and so Peter gets killed and Derek becomes the Alpha. Chris has to face up to his mistakes, his responsibilities, and that's not going to be easy since Victoria will be livid and disgusted with him; his father will of course let it slip during the funeral that he knew about the Chris' disgusting mistake and he does not approve one bit about Allison's hanging around a mutt like the boy. Chris feels guilty for the pain Stiles has suffer and so, like Allison, wants to help and support the boy which Derek is reluctant to let either one of them do, but Allison isn't about to be denied access to her little brother. 
> 
> Eventually, being Peter, he comes back and he's a little bit less crazy and a bit more sane... well, he is as sane as he can be, but that rope snaps the moment Gerard makes a move on his son.


End file.
